


Ain't No Homecoming Without You

by WhatIsAir



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Emotional Constipation, Fluff, M/M, Past Brainwashing, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, brief mentions of past torture, bucky has a terrible sense of humour, bucky needs help with feelings, first kiss since 1935, so does steve tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 13:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6706084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatIsAir/pseuds/WhatIsAir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson finds them in curled together on the cot they're sharing. “Time to go. And just FYI, you two,” he says, “There’s another mattress over there.”</p><p>Bucky looks over to find Steve flushing to the roots of his hair. “Uh,” the embodiment of American justice, patriotism and liberty says, “It was cold last night.”</p><p>-SPOILER ALERT: DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN CIVIL WAR THIS AIN'T A DRILL-</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't No Homecoming Without You

_“Daybreak,” the voice says, and the Soldier shuts his eyes, biting into his mouthguard._

_“Homecoming,” the voice continues; the Soldier whimpers, strains against the straps binding him to the chair. His temples are about to explode._

_“Freight car,” his Commander (because that’s his_ Commander _) says, and the Soldier trembles once more, then settles._

_“Soldat,” his Commander barks. The Soldier’s spine straightens; his eyes open, and the world re-focuses._

_“Ready to comply,” the Soldier says, back straight and eyes dead._

_-_

A trip to the grocer’s and suddenly he’s a wanted man.

Bucky throws the newspaper down (‘Winter Soldier blows up King of Wakanda at UN Vienna conference’, it screams on the front page), kicks a loose stone in the city’s cobbled streets as he makes his way back to the apartment.

The door’s closed but unlocked, and Bucky quietly eases his way in, berating himself for not bringing his gun. The only things he has on his person are his three knives, a hand grenade and the plums from the grocer’s, the last of which _really_ isn’t going to be of any help at all if there’s a hostile on the other side of the door.

The door opens, he slides in and is heartened (though not by much) to find Steve Rogers standing in his kitchen.

“You’re Steve,” he says eventually, when the Captain just stands there, suited up and unsure, backlit by his apartment’s shitty lighting. “I read about you in the museum.”

Steve’s face cycles through a myriad of emotions (if Bucky had to categorize them, which he’s not, he’d hazard a guess at _hope regret sadness confusion regret_ and _pain_ ). Bucky decides he doesn’t want to know.

“Do you –” Steve says, swallowing. He looks at Bucky, then away again, grip on his shield loosening ( _Stupid_ _punk_ , Bucky thinks, _there are 32 ways I could take you down from across the room and you let your guard down?_ ). “Do you remember –”

“– Enough,” Bucky says quickly, cheeks flushing (he hopes in this lighting it doesn’t show), “I remember enough.”

Steve opens his mouth like he’s going to ask what ‘enough’ constitutes, but decides against it as he says, “Those men coming for you, they’re not looking to take you in alive.”

Bucky shrugs, setting the plums down on the table and reaching under the wooden surface for the gun strapped underneath. “They’re not gonna.”

He opens the trapdoor in the ceiling, grabs his rucksack and the AR-50 (procured illegally, of course, strides to the window and turns to Steve. “You coming?”

Steve grins, small and tired, but a grin nonetheless. “Course.”

They jump before the Polizei surrounding the complex make it upstairs, the fall from his building to the rooftop of the one adjacent relatively short, and when they land, it hurts, though not as much as a 3000-foot drop from the Alps had.

“You alright?” He glances at Steve, who’s standing, brushing himself off, already looking behind them and scanning for the men after them.

And Steve looks back, smile radiant as the sun, and Bucky lets himself be consumed by it.

-

“I assure you, James,” the douchebag sitting behind the desk says, “Your cooperation will make this a lot easier. For the both of us.”

Bucky flexes his left hand, tests the strength of the metal bindings. They don’t give an inch. (They’ve built it specifically to hold him, or something even stronger.)

“My name,” he says, raising his head to glare at the asshat on the other side of the glass container, “is Bucky.”

Asshat shrugs like it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even bother to write it down, simply takes a sip from the coffee mug in front of him. He winces at the heat; Bucky grins slightly, viciously. He hopes it burns.

“So tell me, Bucky,” Asshat says, lacing the fingers of his hands together atop his neat stack of papers, “When you killed all those – men, women, children. When they looked at you and pleaded for mercy, and you responded with a bullet in their brain, how did it _feel_?”

Bucky’s throat works and he swallows; the metal plating of his arm whirs of its own accord.

Asshat stares at him and takes another sip of his coffee. “I assure you, Bucky,” he says, and Bucky grimaces (the name sounds wrong coming from him, and grates his ears like nail on chalk), “that your compliance will be rewarded.”

Bucky’s head whips up to stare at him, heart jackhammering against his ribcage. He flexes the fingers of his left hand, feeling the loss of his AR-50 (of Steve) keenly. “You’re HY –”

Asshat laughs, the sound piercing and empty. He pushes his chair back and stands, stalking close to the glass of the containment cell. “HYDRA, you say?” he says, his voice losing the steady, American-neutral accent he had been affecting. Now it’s coloured with something distinctly Eastern European. “No, my friend. I don’t work for those egomaniac bastards. I work for myself.”

He produces a red, leather-bound journal from his jacket, plain save for a faded silver star splashed on the front, and Bucky’s blood stills. “Where did you –”

“Enough talking,” Asshat barks, flipping the journal open to a bookmarked page.

“ _Longing_ ,” he says, and Bucky clenches his eyes shut because _nono_ _please no_ , it’s been twenty odd years but already he can feel the metal plating whir as his arm recalibrates of its own accord, already he can feel the infinitesimal shift in his mind as the Red Room’s programming starts to kick in.

“ _Rusted – Seventeen,_ ” the voice continues, and Bucky clenches his right hand (he still has control of that one) into a fist, digging his nails as hard as he can into his palm. The skin splits and blood spills, spattering the immaculate metal floor, but his victory’s short-lived because the next moment the voice says, “ _Furnace_ ,” and he feels his lungs seize up.

The voice reverberates around him, knocking his skull and taking up residence between his temples. “ _…Daybreak,_ ” it says, and Bucky digs his nails in harder even though he can barely process the pain.

“ _Homecoming_ ,” it says, and Bucky thinks of Steve, because if he lets the Soldier in Steve’s likely to be first casualty and _that_ is one thing Bucky will never allow; he remembers the anguish in Steve’s voice when Bucky’s grasp slipped, when their gloved hands brushed and Bucky fell from the –

“ _Freight car_ ,” the voice (his Commander?) says, and the Soldier opens his eyes.

“Mission report, 16 December 1991,” his Commander barks, and the Soldier tilts his head, wondering when his Commander (the one he remembers, anyway) had been replaced with this new one.

“Ready to comply,” he says anyway, because otherwise it means the Chair and the Soldier really, _really_ doesn’t want to go back in the Chair.

-

“Which Bucky am I talking to?” the voice demands, and Bucky blinks, vision clearing as he looks up to see Steve ( _Steve_ ; the weight on his chest eases because whatever he’s done, however many he’s killed this time, at least Steve wasn’t one of them) standing in front of him, arms folded across his chest.

“’S me, Stevie,” Bucky says tiredly, scrubbing a hand down his face and grimacing when it comes away streaked with red. It takes him a second to remember that the crescent-shaped gouges in his palm were self-inflicted, and he hurriedly curls his hand back into a fist before Steve sees (or worse, starts _worrying_ ).

“You sure we can trust him?” the Falcon (Bucky wracks his scrambled brain for the name: Wilson, Sam) says. He’s standing on Bucky’s other side, eyeing him suspiciously. “I mean, the dude’s tried to kill me on at least three separate occasions now.”

Bucky blinks as Wilson’s words register. “Oh, yeah, sorry bout the wings,” he says, because he distinctively remembers ripping one of them off when they were hundreds of feet above DC, “See you got an upgrade. These are better – the propellers on your old ones were way off.”

Wilson’s mouth opens, shuts, then opens again. He rounds on Steve in outrage. “This how all your friends are like, Steve? Insulting me about my wings? Hey,” he says, when Steve coughs politely into his hand, “Why didn’t you _tell_ me about the propellors, huh?”

Bucky snorts, rolling his eyes. “You think he woulda noticed? Dude’s blinder than I was when they cut out my corneas to see if I would scream.”

An abrupt silence falls, and Bucky looks up in time to see the colour drain from Steve’s face as he looks at Bucky in horror.

Bucky panics, because Steve looks like he’s in serious pain and he has no idea how to stop it. “Wilson,” he says frantically, tugging at the metal crane sandwiching his left arm. He gestures at Steve. “Do _something_.”

“Like what?” Wilson shoots back, who’s crossed the room and has laid a comforting hand on Steve’s back. “Why you couldn’t have kept your damn mouth _shut,_ Barnes, I’ll never –”

“– It was a joke!” Bucky says desperately, tugging ineffectually at his arm, because he needs to get to Steve, like, _yesterday._ The crane doesn’t give. “It was just a joke, Stevie, c’mon.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says eventually, looking up at Bucky with red-rimmed eyes like he’s going to cry (Bucky really hopes he isn’t, because he doesn’t have any Kleenex on him). “It wasn’t a very good one.”

But then Steve straightens and he’s not crying, and Wilson looks like he knows what he’s doing (like maybe if the programming starts up again he’ll put a bullet in Bucky’s head before he lets anything happen to Steve), so at least there’s that.

 -

_“Buck, stop – Buck,” the target says, bringing a knee up into the Soldier’s solar plexus._

_He absorbs the hit (the pain only registering dully in the back of his mind and filed under: to be categorized later) and rolls, wresting the target’s shield from him and bringing it down against his spine._

_There’s a sickening crunch and the target goes pliant under his hands. The Soldier blinks; he’d been expecting more of a fight from Rogers, Steven Grant. His commanders had warned him –_

_He nudges the target with the toe of his boot, and when it doesn’t stir, he rolls it over onto its back. There’s a streak of blood running from a gash to the target’s temple, and its (his?) eyes are open, but they’re sightless, unseeing._

_The Soldier stumbles back, a gutted cry wrenched from his throat for reasons he can’t fathom, the red-white-blue of the target’s uniform and shield triggering something in the back of his mind, and –_

_“Steve,” the Soldier whispers, broken and unsure. He falls to his knees next to the target. “Steve,” he says again, testing out the word, its weight on his tongue. It feels right, more than anything has in a long,_ long _time._

_“Soldat,” a voice says from behind him, and the Soldier freezes._

_“Soldat, mission report,” the voice, his Commander’s voice, says again, and the Soldier shudders._

_The stun baton, when it lands between his shoulder blades, comes as no surprise. Once the shock leaves his system and he’s no longer convulsing, the Soldier says, “The target, I… I knew him.”_

_His Commander raises an eyebrow, although he doesn’t look impressed. “Of course you did, soldat. We gave you his file.”_

_The Soldier frowns. “No, I… I knew him from,” he licks his lips, because Zola hadn’t liked it when he spoke of_ before _, and he isn’t sure how his new Commander will respond. “From before.”_

 _His Commander laughs, a bark that’s sharp and short. “Oh, soldat. The techs warned me about this. You really_ did _love Captain Rogers, didn’t you? You must have, if it managed to survive all that programming.”_

_The Soldier grits his teeth. “Negative,” he says, like he’s been taught to say, even as his heart picks up and his breaths grow shallow, “Negative negative negative –”_

“Bucky, _Buck_ ,” Steve’s saying, and Bucky blinks.

He’s lying on his cot on the dingy warehouse floor, and Steve’s leaning over him, hands on Bucky’s shoulders, effectively holding him down.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky groans, letting his head thump back against the lumpy mattress, “What’d I do?”

“What’d you – oh,” Steve says, understanding colouring his tone, “You didn’t do anything, Buck. No one’s hurt. It was just a nightmare, I think. You were shouting a lot.”

Bucky grimaces, slowly starts to sit up. He rubs absently at the spot between his shoulder blades, half-expecting it to still be tender from the electroshock. “’S more like a memory,” he says, and immediately wishes he’d kept his mouth shut when Steve’s brow creases in worry. “Sorry I woke you.”

“I wasn’t asleep anyway,” Steve says, and Bucky looks at him, really _looks_ at him, and sees the tiredness reflected in the bruises under his eyes, the minute tremour in his hands where they’re still resting on Bucky’s shoulders.

“Hey, man, get some rest,” he says, moving to get off the cot so Steve can lie down. “I’ll keep watch.”

Steve’s hand curls around his wrist, tugging him back down. Bucky frowns. “Steve, get off.”

“No,” Steve says stubbornly from where his face is mashed against the pillow. “Buck, stay.”

Bucky sighs, but doesn’t object, because if their plan the next day’s going to carry through, he’s going to need all the sleep he can get. So he flops back down onto the narrow cot and arranges himself so he’s lying on his side next to Steve, careful to keep his left arm to himself.

His breathing’s only just started evening out when Steve shifts, squirms and is generally a nuisance. Bucky cracks an open. “What,” he says flatly, because the punk just _won’t stop moving_.

“S not enough space,” Steve says, and rolls over onto his side so he’s facing Bucky.

Bucky goes very, very still, and when Steve slings an arm over his back and brings the two of them chest-to-chest Bucky says, his voice unusually scratchy, “Stevie, what’re you doin –”

“Trying to get some sleep,” Steve mutters, tangling his legs with Bucky’s under the sheets and finally settling with his head nestled half on the pillow, half in the crook of Bucky’s shoulder.

“Sleep?” Bucky says, metal arm whirring as he flexes his fingers unconsciously. “I can’t – I gotta –” he fumbles for an excuse, “– keep a lookout.”

“Don’t bother,” Steve says, voice muffled into Bucky’s shirt. “Sam’s on lookout duty till sunrise, so we’re cool.”

“Oh.” Bucky casts his mind around for another excuse.

“Buck, breathe,” Steve says, sounding amused, and Bucky sucks in a breath, not realizing he’d been holding it. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

“You better not, punk,” Bucky shoots back instinctively, and is gratified when Steve shifts (okay, fine, snuggles) closer to him until his lips are pressed into Bucky’s clavicle.

“Night, jerk,” Steve says, and Bucky lets his eyes slide shut, lets _the Soldat_ fade from his mind, and drifts

-

“Rise and shine, motherfuckers,” is the first thing Bucky hears the next morning.

He groans, not wanting to move from his cocoon of blanket and limbs and _Steve_.

“Fuck off,” he says, flicking a hand in the general direction of Wilson’s voice.

He yelps when the covers are yanked off, the attack catching him unawares so he slides gracelessly off the cot to the floor, one leg still tangled in the sheets.

“What the _fuck_ , Wilson,” he says loudly. He glances over to find Steve sitting up, disoriented. He’d fallen to the floor, too.

Wilson raises an unimpressed eyebrow. He’s already suited up. “It’s time to go. And just FYI, you two,” he says, and gestures to the other side of the room, “There’s another mattress over there.”

Bucky looks over to find Steve flushing to the roots of his hair. “Uh,” the embodiment of American justice, patriotism and liberty says, “It was cold last night.”

“Right, because it’s only thirty degrees outside right now,” Wilson says, rolling his eyes. “Come on, we don’t have time for this. Suit up and sort it out when we’re in the air.”

-

They run into Tony and his team at Leipzig, and it’s only because Natasha helps them that they make it onto one of the Quinjets.

“Do you really think I’m worth all this, Steve,” Bucky says now, low and defeated (Steve feels a knife twist through his gut), and it’s not even a question.

Steve’s hand stills on the controls and he half-turns, air traffic safety be damned. “Listen, Buck,” he says, because he needs Bucky to know, needs Bucky to _understand_ , “What happened to all the victims the Red Room’s commissioned, all the people that were on your list, that’s not on you.”

Bucky raises his head, stares almost defiantly at Steve. “Doesn’t change the fact I did those things, though, does it.”

“It wasn’t you, Buck,” Steve says, insists, more for himself than for Bucky. “That’s all HYDRA.”

Bucky fidgets with the strap of his seatbelt, the metal of his left hand glinting under the Siberian sun. “I know,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t believe a word of it.

-

“Oh, but _Tony_ ,” Zemo (formerly Asshat) says, as he flicks a switch on the control panel and the screen in front of them flickers, lights up, “I thought you knew.”

Stark glances at screen, clearly uninterested. “You’re just a coward who hides behind other people’s success,” he says, flipping his visor up so he can turn the Tony Stark thousand-watt glare on Zemo. “It’s because of people like you that the world has –”

“ _Howard_ ,” Maria’s staticky voice cries, wrought with loss and terror, and Bucky sees the moment the change comes over Stark’s face at the same time he _remembers_.

Stark walks, almost disbelievingly, over to the screen, on which Bucky can make out the grainy, 1990s security camera footage. There’s a car, its hood crushed, and an elderly man lying crumpled on the highway. There’s a flash of metal, the red star on its arm crimson as blood, and Bucky watches himself reach through the smashed window and wring the life from Maria Stark’s neck with his (human) hand.

He flexes his right hand involuntarily, fancying he can still feel the crush of arteries, hear the choked-out gasps for Howard, the pleas for mercy. Maria and Howard are in the ground, _dead_ , and he’s the one who put them there. _Howard_ , who gave him and Steve tickets to the Stark Expo, who pretended he hated everyone but if you asked him, would drop everything and fly across two countries to help you, _dead_.

(And it’s _his_ fault.)

For a full three seconds no one moves, and then Stark lunges at him. Steve jumps in, holding Stark back as best he can, but Stark fires his repulsors straight into his chest and he’s knocked down, crumpling to the floor.

“Let’s see how _you_ like it when your empire crumbles from the inside, _Avengers_ ,” Zemo spits, voice echoing in the cavernous hall.

“ _You_ ,” Stark says, eyes burning with hatred as he turns to Bucky. “I’ll _kill_ you,” is all the warning Bucky gets before Stark’s fired up the suit and he’s on him, hitting and punching with no finesse, driven purely by his need for vengeance.

Bucky thinks about Maria, about Howard, about the slowly ebbing pulse in Maria’s neck, and lets his rifle fall. He lets himself absorb the blows, exalts in every single one of them he can feel, as Stark’s suit bruises his cheek, cracks his ribs, makes him whole again.

“I can’t – believe I ever – thought I could – be on – your side,” Stark grits out, punctuating his words with a flurry of blows, and Bucky coughs, tasting blood in the back of his throat as he keeps his left arm locked firmly behind his back.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and leans over to spit blood out of his mouth. “For what it’s worth, Stark, I’m sorry. They were my friends t –”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Stark yells, and punctuates this with an uppercut that snaps Bucky’s head back, “Don’t you _dare_. You don’t know anything, you don’t know them, not like I do.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” Stark goes on, fisting a hand in Bucky’s hair and yanking. Bucky winces at the assault on his scalp, but doesn’t resist (he deserves every ounce of the pain he’s feeling). “To lose everyone you care about in a day, and to live on with the knowledge, the _guilt_ , that you never, not once in your life, told them you loved them?”

Bucky’s gaze slides sideways, to Steve’s supine form on the floor, and his shield, lying useless on the floor next to him.

Something in his face must give it away, because a slow grin spreads over Stark’s face and he takes a step back, releasing his hold on Bucky.

“Stark, don’t,” Bucky says warningly, struggling to get his feet under him as Stark advances on Steve, scooping up Bucky’s discarded rifle along the way.

Steve groans, then, as he finally comes to, and blinks open his eyes to find the muzzle of Bucky’s rifle being pointed at him.

“Tony, what –” he says, as he sits up and assesses the situation: Stark, with the AR-50 pointed unerringly at Steve’s forehead; Bucky, bloodied and beaten, slowly limping his way across the room.

“I’d forgotten, Barnes,” Stark says now, giving Bucky a vicious smile over his shoulder, “That you’d already lost everyone you cared about before. It must’ve been hard, going through all of it once. Think you’ll be able to do it again?”

Steve’s eyes widen a split second before Stark fires, and Bucky’s close enough now that he can throw himself at Steve, the bullet ripping clean through the join between his left shoulder and arm, severing it from him completely.

“Tony, _please_ ,” he hears Steve say, but he’s distracted because the loss of his arm results in an electroshock (the Soviets programmed him so no one else except them could take him apart) that grips him, lancing through his whole body until he’s consumed by it, and he barely registers the firm grip Steve has around him, holding him while he shakes, his world swallowed up in fire and heat and _Steve_.

A second before his eyes slide shut and the world goes dimmer than cryosleep, Bucky faintly registers the lowering of a rifle, a whispered ‘thank you’, and then the firm press of lips to his temple.

-

Consciousness hits him in waves, and when he finally comes to, it’s to arms wrapped securely around him and the rhythmic rise and fall of Steve’s chest, his nose buried in the back of Bucky’s neck.

“Steve, hey,” Bucky says, and turns to face him, feeling keenly the loss of his arm when he’s unable to prop himself up on his left elbow.

“Mm,” Steve says, yawning, instantly becoming more alert when he sees that Bucky’s awake. “Oh, hey. Wasn’t expecting you to wake up. Doc said with the amount of drugs she gave you, you wouldn’t be up for another 12 hours at least.”

“You doin’ okay, Stevie?” Bucky says, because Steve looks _terrible_ , like he hasn’t slept in five years.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, “Just worried about you. Hospital’s taken your arm, by the way. They’ve got techs working to dissemble it, take out the Soviet programming, and afterwards you can have it ba –”

“I don’t want it,” Bucky says quickly. Steve opens his mouth to protest and Bucky talks over him, “ _No_ , Steve. I’ve – I’ve done enough with it as it is. If you put the arm back on me, who’s to say next time someone with a grudge can’t unencrypt those HYDRA files and hack my programming?”

“But if the techs take out the programming you can still –”

“No, I’m done,” Bucky says, and curls his hand into the collar of Steve’s shirt. “I can’t risk you again, Steve, I _can’t_.”

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his tears soak Steve’s shirt, and Steve keeps his arms around him, folding him to his chest and holding him as he trembles and breaks and reassembles himself.

“Buck, you don’t have to worry about me,” Steve says, carding a soft hand through Bucky’s hair, “I can take care of myself.”

Bucky laughs ruefully. “Yeah, I know, punk. Been takin’ care of yourself since 1935, haven’t ya.”

“You know what I mean,” Steve says, before pulling back and considering Bucky carefully. “Hey, Buck,” he says, in an offhand manner that’s anything but, “How much of 1935 do you remember?”

Bucky pauses, because what he hasn’t let on is that he _remembers_ most things before he fell, it’s just the bits _after_ HYDRA got their hands on him that he has trouble with, so he knows exactly what Steve’s referring to, what Steve’s _asking_ of him.

“I remember –” Bucky says, licking his lips, “I remember goin’ to Coney Island with you for your birthday, that was ’35, right? I remember the Cyclone. You didn’t wanna go on it but I wanted to so you came with, and afterwards you got sick and I basically carried your ass home and,” Bucky stops, unsure whether Steve means for him to continue.

“And?” Steve says, breath fanning against Bucky’s cheek, so close Bucky can see the specks green in his cornflower blue eyes. ( _It’s nice to know that even Captain America has flaws_.)

“And,” Bucky says, swallowing, “And you asked me for your birthday present, and I said I hadn’t gotten you one because of _inflation, punk_. And you said –”

“What’d I say?” Steve murmurs, cradling the back of Bucky’s head with his hands.

“ _Can I have you instead?_ ” Bucky breathes, and isn’t sure if he’s echoing Steve’s words from ’35 or asking Steve himself.

Steve doesn’t bother replying, and for that Bucky will always be grateful, because it means Steve’s mouth on his ( _finally finally finally_ ) and Steve’s hands in his hair, and Bucky’s sliding down Steve’s back to slip beneath the hem of his shirt, and it’s evidently been far too long, because, as Bucky pulls back to say –

“Steve, was that your first kiss since 1935?”

“Ooh, _savage_!” Wilson crows, and Bucky whips round to glare at him. Wilson hurriedly (guiltily) pockets his phone. “It’s not going on Facebook, guys, don’t worry.”

“Ever heard of knocking?”

“The door was open, so I let myself in,” Wilson announces chirpily, plonking down a giant basket of plums on Bucky’s bedside table. “Oh, and Steve, you might wanna check out what Twitter has to say about you and your man.”

“Steve?” Bucky glances down in concern, because Steve’s hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. “What’s Twitter?”

“Sam, I hate you,” he says, muffled and petty, into his arm.

Wilson grins. “Feeling’s mutual, Cap. At your service, as always.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, because Steve’s really starting to scare him now. “Hey, don’t worry, however many men this – Twitter has, we can take ‘em.”

Steve finally lets up, taking his arm away and Bucky sees that he’s laughing, shoulders shaking silently. “Oh, Buck,” he gasps between fits of laughter, “Twitter’s not – I mean, it’s. Sam, you explain,” he manages, before dissolving into hysterics once more.

Wilson stands with his arms folded, a grave expression on his face. There’s an intermittent twitch in his lips, like he’s trying really hard not to smile. “It’s an unbeatable force, I’m afraid. You can’t shake ‘em either. The way I see it, you’ll have to disappear.”

Bucky purses his lips. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, looking over at Steve. He’s calmed down and is nestled comfortably against the pillows, one arm still around Bucky, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth that Bucky can’t resist leaning over to taste.

“Let them come,” he says, pulling away. “We’ll show them how it’s done in Brooklyn.”

“Um, Buck,” Steve shifts beside him, “We’re not in Brook –”

“Jesus, Steve, stop killing my vibe,” Bucky groans, letting his forehead thump against Steve’s chest. “You think I don’t know what _Twitter_ is? Please. HYDRA had me hack Obama’s Twitter once, to infiltrate the Pentagon.”

“You did _what_?” Steve and Wilson exclaim simultaneously, and Bucky hurriedly backtracks.

“Thank you for the plums, Sam, they’re great,” he says, grabbing one from the basket. “And Steve, have I ever told you how much you mean to me?”

“Don’t think you’re gettin’ off that easy,” Wilson says warningly, though he looks slightly mollified that Bucky likes the plums, at the same time Steve says –

“ _Buck_ ,” softly, reverently, and he’s staring at Bucky with a starstruck look in his eyes, like he thinks Bucky’s the face of God or something. “Do you–”

“–Think you’re talking too much? Yeah,” Bucky says, shifting so they’re aligned, chest to hips to knees. “Wilson, stop taking pictures and get out,” he says, throwing his plum in Wilson’s general direction. He catches it before it hits him.

“Fine, but you owe me dinner, the two of you,” Wilson grumbles, shutting the door behind him on the way out.

“D’you want me to show you,” Bucky murmurs, pressing a kiss to the side of Steve’s neck, “What I remember from 1935?”

Steve shudders. “Yes, _yes_ ,” he says, pulling Bucky back up for a kiss and Bucky’s been lost before, adrift in a sea of _longing-rusted-furnace-homecoming-freightcar_ but that all fades away into insignificance because he’s home now, he’s found it, anchored safely in the circle of Steve’s arms, and really, what more could he ask for?

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading y'all leave a comment if you liked it and tell me what you thought(:
> 
> also WTF am i the only one who thinks cap 3 wasn't all it's been hyped up to be? ok i know it was a great movie and they had amazing action sequences and the Bucky-Sam dynamics were on point (omg also Tom Holland and Chadwick Boseman nailed it) but BUT 
> 
> have the Russo brothers completely lost the plot bc last i checked this is meant to be Captain America 3 not frickin Iron Man 4 will someone please explain why the Iron Man-Captain America ratio was so fucked up with Cap getting sidelined out of his own fuckin movie omfg
> 
> ok rant over i'm sorry for the controversial opinion but i just felt it had to be said. i mean, it's still an amazing movie in its own right and i'll probably see it again, so i can't talk
> 
> anyways how'd y'all find it and did anyone think Tony was getting too much of the spotlight or is it just me?
> 
> have a nice weekend wherever you are and please someone save the franchise from falling heteronormative social confines omg (i'm still angry over the 'unexpected' kiss that was meant to be between two characters no one woulda thought of but they had to go and give it to sharon carter i'm so done)


End file.
